Service providers often spend considerable money to visit a customer premises such as at a customer's house and disconnect and connect various data services and customer premises equipment to local customers. This is known in the industry to those skilled in the art as the dreaded truck roll. Often, this could be obviated if there was some technique to remotely manage and configure remotely an ONU, such as from a central office management system. This would be especially applicable when using a reverse powered ONU and allowing the central office management system to send various management messages.